Specialising in high-end, impeccably made acoustics, Ely, UK-based Jamie Swannell currently has one electric model in his catalogue, and he explains that it is named after “St Ia, who floated across the Irish Sea on a leaf. She landed in Cornwall and gave her name to St Ives, the town I grew up in.”
It was there that Jamie made his first electric guitar, while still at school, in his dad’s shed. Some years later his decision to follow the guitar-making life led him to Newark School of Musical Instrument Crafts where he graduated in 2015 with a Distinction and was invited to teach, which he did before totally focusing on his own guitars – mainly acoustic, with the exception of this very classy IA.
